Publisher's Synopsis
Blood Moon's newest book examines the hidden sexual secrets of long-time companions, FBI Directors J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, and their decades-long obsession with the darkest indiscretions of famous Americans. This is history's first exposure of J. Edgar's obsession with voyeuristic sex and its links to the priorities of his law enforcement agency. It's the most detailed and most shocking insight into J. Edgar Hoover ever published, an unprecedented overview of a life devoted to unveiling other people's darkest secrets while rigorously concealing his own. Award-winning celebrity biographer Darwin Porter answers the questions you've always wanted to know. But if you'd asked them during Hoover's heyday, he'd probably have had you investigated and punished. "The book," according to Blood Moon's president, Danforth Prince, "goes much farther than the Clint Eastwood/Leonardo DiCaprio film, J. Edgar. Hoover enforced his status as a kingmaker through eight presidential administrations, shrewdly manipulating social unrest, wars, and political rivalries to make his 'dictatorship' of the FBI indispensible. He developed a talent for blackmail that terrorized presidents, senators, journalists, congressmen, and public advocates who included both Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr. He secretly delivered or deliberately withheld information about issues related to national security as a means of reinforcing his personal power, and he manipulated public anxieties in ways that allowed Red-baiter Joseph McCarthy to destroy some of the most creative people in Hollywood. He collaborated with the darkest factions within American society, including the Mafia, and eventually evolved into one of the most widely loathed people in America, often assuming that no one would dare to publish an exposé of how his shocking sexual values and priorities survived, and flourished, within the FBI. "But eventually, as the book reveals, many of Hoover's victims inaugurated investigations of their own. Anecdotes were bruited throughout Washington, New York, and Los Angeles and mockingly discussed, in front of witnesses, by key figures in law enforcement, the military, the entertainment community, and the porn industry. And the more famous Hoover became, the more recognizable he was to the male hustlers and everyday, run-of-the-mill gay men he encountered at the private parties and orgies he attended with or without Clyde. This book reveals many of these dynamics in ways never before exposed." "You can expect a lot from this book, and it richly delivers. It presents stories from both within the FBI and tales from its victims. Compiled from decades of meticulous research, dozens of first-hand interviews, and information recently released through the Freedom of Information Act, Darwin Porter distills J. Edgar's 50-year obsession with communists, 'sexual perverts,' and dissenters of any ilk into a spellbinding read."
